


Liberty

by Naraht



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Gen, London
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 23:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of Aunt Olive and her pilgrimages to London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liberty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greerwatson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/gifts).



"Olive likes to get her knitting things at Liberty," says Lucy dismissively whenever my trips to London are mentioned.

And it's very true. My mother used to take me shopping on Regent Street back before the Great War, when Art Nouveau was almost young, and I would ponder the curves and arabesques of the fabrics she examined as if they held some message that I could decipher.

When I was grown up, in the '20s, I began to make my own pilgrimages to the new shop on Great Marlborough Street. I have always considered the attics of Liberty my own private sanctum, the country house that the Lethbridge family never inherited. Furniture and fabrics all cluttered together under the broad beams of the eaves. One feels delightfully topsy-turvy there, nestled within the darkened ribs of old Royal Navy warships, as if one could be shipwrecked on a desert island and then, with the wave of Prospero's wand, find oneself in a smartly equipped, first-rate London department store.

I could stand for hours in the knitting department, running the wool through my fingers. Mohair, cashmere, silk, all the lovely colours. And the young shop assistants are always so kind to me and so charming. There is one lovely redhead who could be right out of a Rossetti painting...

But what was I telling you? I do wander sometimes.

After all those years looking after Father, I never had the chance to move to London. I never married, though I am hardly the only one; I was, after all, fourteen when the Great War began, and no doubt some young man who was meant to be my husband met his end at the Somme or Passchendaele.

(I regret that, perhaps, less than I ought.)

You might ask me when I realised I was different, but I never was different. Everyone had pashes at my school. Everyone! I arrived with my much-thumbed school stories, dreaming of fourth-form friendships and modern tomboys, and it turned out that all the other girls must have read the same stories because that was exactly how things went on. We girls thought love just as much of a game as hockey, and we played at both with equal earnestness. How thrilling I found my schooldays! Quietly I pitied poor cousin Lucy, six years older, whose parents had kept her at home with a governess.

My fourteenth year makes me think of chalk dust and muddy playing fields and custard with school dinners, and the consciousness somewhere of distant guns which hardly touched our lives. While I knitted socks for the men, I fell in love with a Belgian refugee, a year younger than me, who arrived among us speaking hardly a word of English. Amidst romantic daydreams of escaping the Germans together, I improved my French no end, and was only slightly disappointed to learn that Margot had very little to say for herself in either language.

"Olive, you talk enough for the both of you together!" said Miss Thompson once, affectionately, in the middle of an English lesson. 

I felt a delighted flush rise to my face at the thought that she had noticed me. And I confess that from that moment my affections transferred themselves to her. I loved her devotedly--and yes, purely--until I left school. She had come to us almost straight from St. Hugh's and used, when the sixth formers gathered round in the evenings to listen to her read from 'Goblin Market,' to absent-mindedly stroke my hair as I sat on the floor at her side.

(So you see I understood exactly what it meant when I found that picture in one of Laurie's books, a cricket team trimmed down to a single boy's face. I know how it feels to look at a whole crowd and see only one. Perhaps I should have said nothing--I never have been able to hold my tongue. But anyone with sense knows that an old schoolfriend doesn't turn up at his friend's mother's wedding unless he is a very good friend indeed!)

If the war hadn't ended I suppose I would have become an ambulance driver or something else terribly romantic on the front. As it was I dreamt of going up to Oxford and making cocoa for my dearest friends in my very own room, but Father's illness meant that it was simply impossible for me. 

And the real world is nothing like school, though it took a doomed 'pash' for the vicar's wife to teach me that lesson. That was when I started making my trips up to London. 

No one seems to object. There is always something for me to bring back for an aunt or a cousin: books from Mudie's, a pair of socks from Selfridge's, a hamper from Fortnum's. When Laurie enlisted, dear Lucy sent me all over London, collecting so many supplies for him that I could barely bundle them home on the crowded train. I don't mind; I never complain. It lets them carry on believing that my trips are made out of a sense of sacrifice and not on my own account.

Though I never did have an Eton crop, and I never did meet Miss Radclyffe Hall, I was young during the twenties too and went to my share of gay parties. Nowadays I am rather more sedate and go to a little place in Chelsea, though no doubt it would seem bohemian enough to someone like Lucy, if she were to stumble through that unassuming green door on Kings Road!

You couldn't imagine a more charming place. Only a select sort of men visit, and they are all so darling that one never minds the company. These days the club is full of servicewomen all in their uniforms, WRNS and WAAFs and ATS, all so very dashing. It is enough to make a woman want to enlist, though I feel a bit past it at my age, and I have too many responsibilities at home. So I sit in a corner of the club with my shopping bags by my side sipping a cup of tea--or something a little stronger--and quietly enjoying the company.

It was pure chance that I left the club so early that particular day. I forget whether I had a few things left to buy, or simply an early train to catch. 

Whatever the reason, I emerged into the last light of an early November sunset all in a rush and feeling rather flurried. I was still adjusting my hat when I walked straight into a Navy Lieutenant who was just turning towards the door.

I may have squeaked at the sight of him; in fact I'm certain that I _did_ squeak, for the shock of it took my breath away. It was none other than R. R. Lanyon, Laurie's friend from school, the boy in the photograph.

"Well!" I exclaimed, which was hardly any better. By all rights I ought to have been mortified but I was too thrilled at my own discovery. I was right after all; I had known it.

As for R. R. Lanyon, he paused for a moment as though he had been caught out in something--which, in a manner of speaking, he had. Then a slow and knowing smile spread across his face, and he lifted his cap to me.

"Miss Lethbridge, isn't it? I never forget a face."

**Author's Note:**

> Opinion seems to be divided about the Gateway Club in Chelsea: when did it open, exactly, and when did it become exclusively lesbian? Here I've made the choice that makes the most sense for the story, enabling Olive and Ralph to cross paths.


End file.
